Well, here's a side of the story from Iraq that we haven't been getting:

"The first miracle that occurred in Fallujah took the form of spiders that appeared in the city – each spider larger than this chair, or about the size of this chair. The American soldiers left, holding the legs of this spider, and I too, in one of the Friday sermons, held up a spider, with all its magnitude, in front of the satellite channels and in front of the world. This spider also had thin black hair. If this hair touches the human body, within a short period of time the body becomes black or blue, and then there is an explosion in the blood cells in the human body - and the person dies."

I guess he was wearing gloves when he held it up in front of the cameras, which apparently had no video feed, or surely we would have at least seen this on Al Jazeera by now.

The story is chock full of this kind of lunacy.

Snopes had a bit on the Iraqi camel spiders:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/bugs/camelspider.asp

Ugly. Really ugly. But not an effective force multiplier.

BUGS, Mr. Rico! And I'm a-burnin' 'em down!

HUZZAH!! I rolled a 20 and made may saving throw versus poison. My turn in initiative, I'll cast my 1st level light spell into their eyes to blind them -- Ta hee ta hee ta hee *clapping with glee*

"I rolled a 20 and made may saving throw versus poison. My turn in initiative, I'll cast my 1st level light spell into their eyes to blind them -- Ta hee ta hee ta hee *clapping with glee*"

Now *that* brings back some memories. I guess we cleaned all the chaotic evil Orcs out of Fallujah.

-S

You two are joking, but here is an excerpt from an actual e-mail a 22-year old Army sergeant wrote to his father from Falluja:

"We are going very close to Barad-Dur. We are told there are a lot of orcs there."

Go figure.

And, FYI Orcs are lawful evil. They respect their own organization and leaders.

Ilya, maybe the ones Stephen's referring to are teenaged orcs, rebelling against authority.

You can spot them by their utter lack of body piercings.

Coast to Coast had a photo of camel spiders a while back:
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/gen/page440.html

Since Camel spiders are real and the preacher doesn't seem to have ever seen one before I'm starting to wonder if perhaps there were a few foreigners in Fallujiah.